Fall Into Change.

Yesterday, I found myself sitting on a train, which was parked at the Fullerton El stop.

The CTA had suffered one of their many breakdowns and our train sat, motionless, doors open, at the new Fullerton stop.

The Fullerton stop is being renovated. The entire area is lined in orange, construction mesh. The tired old el structures are long gone. In it’s place, is the gun-metal grey shell of the new el platform structure. It’s a cold, skeletal, steel. I don’t know if they’re going to cover it or paint it or just leave it exposed in the carefree design aesthetic that is so popular in the city’s many Chipotles.

It looks unfinished.
In a state of flux.
A work in progress.

I think about the old, gothic, DePaul basketball gym that they tore down to build the new station and I can’t help but reflect on what was lost. That thing looked like a church. With it’s long, thin, gothic windows and the spires and gargoyles. I didn’t even know it was a basketball gym until they tore the building open during demolition, exposing the smooth, tan, wooden basketball floor to the sun for two or three days, until that was gone too.

The overhead covering is finally finished at Fullerton. Which is nice. It means that commuters aren’t going to get rained on anymore, while waiting for their train to come. It’s a small sign that this plan is going to happen. That progress is being made. Change is slowly coming. As inevitable as the pee-smelling car on the Redline. It’s coming for you.

So, while I sat there, looking up at the new roof, sitting in a car that was now parked right where the old basketball hoop used to be, I had a chance to reflect on the changes that are happening in my life, too.

Bob and Stacey are gone now.
They’ve been in Portland for a few days now, setting down the spikes of their theater company, moments before the raise the center pole and set up camp. I bet they’ve already had their first auditions.

I miss them fiercely.

Ryan is leaving soon, too.
At Garcia’s the other night, he casually mentioned that he’d picked his “Move to L.A. date”. Sept. 1. A week away. Less than a week, actually. I looked down at my dinner and thought, “Fuck. I don’t think I am ready for that. I am not ready for these long conversations about art and writing to end.” But I just smiled back at him and said, “Good for you. This is going to be a great opportunity for you.” Because it will be. He can do big things there. Things that he can't do, if he stays here.

I am going to miss him too.

Matt Rossi called me yesterday, as a kindness, to offer me his tv set. He knows that Joe doesn’t have one in his bedroom and since Matt won’t be taking his tv with him to New York, next week, Joe is welcomed to it. Matt is moving to New York City to get his graduate degree at Columbia University. Another big step for another friend of mine.

I will miss him too.

So much change in such a short time. People seem to be leaving. Going off, looking for something that they’re missing.

Maybe it’s this time of year. The slow transition from summer into fall. A time for a person to make the big changes in their lives. Traditionally, this was when you would begin a new school year. A pattern that most of us weathered for 13 years or more. Maybe it implants that urge onto our psyche and as the weather cools off, we begin to naturally think, “Well, time to pack a lunch, buy some books and get ready to go back for another year of figuring things out all over again.”

For those of us who are not changing, who have found the thing that we were missing, it’s a sad time. A time to mark the departures of old friends. And to note that the good life that we enjoy here, which is so vibrantly colored by the personalities of the amazing people around us, is a little bit diminished by their loss.

This is a selfish thing to think. That “my life is a little bit lessened by your absence”. It ignores the good things that wait out there for these brave explorers. It’s nakedly self-centered. And I am a little ashamed to being feeling it as much as I do.

But then, I can only consistently see my own point of view. My only reference point is my own experience. And while I sat there on the train, neither moving forward, nor backwards, I could not deny that things were changing around me. And whether these changes were a good or bad impact on the quality of my life, did not affect their inevitability one bit.